


Where the Stars Dance

by bluebeholder



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dancing, Fireworks, Grand Gestures Of Romance, Human Outsider (Dishonored), M/M, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Post-DotO, cameos from other characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 12:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14056653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: A year after the Outsider arrives at Dunwall Tower, freed from the Void and human again, there's a celebration. It's not forhim, so to speak, but Corvo is intent on celebrating him all the same.What's a romance without a proper dance?





	Where the Stars Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adrift_me](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrift_me/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DRIFT!!!! Have some dancing, reveling, and making merry. And fireworks. And kissing. Corvo being Extra. All the good things. :)
> 
> <3<3<3
> 
> (This is a technical sequel to "Where Gods and Dreamers Dance", but you don't have to have read that one to read this one.)

I look, one last time, at myself in the mirror. I’m _very_ late and yet I can’t stop myself from checking just once more. Unnecessarily, but with a force of anxious habit, I straighten my jacket again. It’s perfect, of course, I’m careful with that. Dove-gray, the whole thing, because I can’t bear more weighty black. Soft and crisp and perfectly tailored, with braid around the wrists and collar, whalebone buttons inlaid with mother-of-pearl gleaming. Boots not quite knee high, but close enough.

With my most arrogant expression, I appear perhaps a little too regal. I don’t care. Tonight is special, and the tremor of nerves is making me unsteady enough that I’m willing to rely on an old mask to avoid breaking anything.

So many times, now, I feel as if I’m grasping blindly in the dark. There was a time when everything was open to me, when every motion was easily visible, but not anymore. The future is as blank to me as it is to the people around me. And though there should be no uncertainty tonight, I _still_ feel as if something is chewing on the back of my neck and making me prickle with fear.

In the hall of the Tower I can feel eyes on me as I pass. I’m still an unusual commodity here, fodder for so much rich gossip. My past, my identity, my relationship to the crown…there’s nothing about me that hasn’t been dissected. I give them nothing _to_ dissect, nor do my hosts. They can postulate all they want that I’m a pretty streetwalker from Tyvia who caught the Lord Protector’s eye, that I’m some bastard sibling of the Empress…or whatever fancies they’ve conjured up this week.

The truth is far, far stranger than any of their fiction.

On this night is a revel, some patriotic holiday that has the whole city turned on its head. I’m told there will be fireworks—I can safely say that those will be spectacular, given the identity of the maker. She learned the beginnings of her trade as a child at her father’s knee. He worked in mines, with dynamite, and her youthful experiments at his side were the genesis of marvels. Snaps became firecrackers, and from firecrackers she moved on to Serkonan candles and fountains of sparks. Prodigy brought her to the Academy of Natural Sciences until the family’s money ran out, and by that time she was already nearing mastery. An apprenticeship with a maker of fireworks in Tyvia brought her the final pieces and fame she needed to become a true artist. Girandolas and flying fish, crosettes and comets, in colors that no firework maker before had even dreamed.

And tonight, by special commission, she’ll perform her art for the Empress herself. It’s a crowning laurel for a woman with a distinguished career, a legacy that will burn longer than her fireworks ever did. I toast to her success; it’s been a long time coming.

No one announces me as I enter: the doors are wide open tonight, so the crème de la crème of Dunwall can come and go as they please. This suits me well. I drift, largely unnoticed, through the crowd to the point of light where Empress Emily Kaldwin holds court.

Ever since Delilah, dear little Emily has striven much harder to be the Empress her Isles need. Of course she hasn’t stopped running the rooftops at night, but she studies ruling, and has begun to learn how to take apart words and thoughts and feelings and put them back together to be what she needs to succeed. In many ways, I think, the crises that have successively marked her reign—crises through which she has always escaped unscathed—have given her a clear-sighted determination that even Jessamine never had. She is becoming admirable.

“There you are, I thought you were sleeping the party away,” Wyman teases as I slip into my accustomed place by their side. They hand me a glass of wine. How long have they held it for me? I’m touched by the gesture.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I say, raising my brows at the crowd. Knaves and churls in pretty clothes, most of them, with a few brilliant people of goodness and forthright thought. Still, there’s a current of excitement in the air, an excitement that’s the closest I can now get to standing still amid the eddies of energy and emotion that surge without end through the human world.

“Corvo was starting to fidget,” Wyman murmurs. They take a sip and pointedly roll their eyes at him. “Emily made him go and see about security, just to make him stop looking around like a lost puppy.”

I nearly choke on the wine as I laugh. The image of Corvo as a lost puppy is both appealing and hilarious, as well as being utterly inaccurate. I’m sure he was wholly stoic as he watched for me, but Emily can always tell when her father is showing particularly horrible symptoms of lovesickness.

“Where is he?” I ask, recovering myself.

Wyman shrugs elegantly. “On his way back, I’m sure,” they say. “He doesn’t want to let Emily out of his sight. The track record for celebrations in Dunwall in the last two years is utterly abysmal. Not to bring up she who must not be named, but you take my point.”

I take their point. So I stand and wait, idly sipping the glass of wine, observing the crowd. Finally, though, I spot Corvo making his way back to us. I smile at him and give a faint bow; instantly, his tense expression fades into a smile. Human hearts biologically can’t turn over, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like mine just did a backflip.

Corvo comes to stand beside me. “Good to see you this evening,” he says, appropriately neutral.

“And you,” I say. “Having fun?”

“As much as the Lord Protector ever can in a crowd like this,” Corvo says dryly.

I notice that Wyman has ducked out of the way. I take no offense: they’re quite good about leaving Corvo and I time to talk to each other. “Relax and have fun,” I advise. “Tonight’s a good night.”

“They’re celebrating things that don’t matter,” Corvo says. He smiles at me again. “You and I, on the other hand, should celebrate something that does.”

“Oh?”

“It’s been a year since you came here,” Corvo says.

Ah, yes, the anniversary. I raise my glass a little. “To the beggar boy who slipped in at your window and scared you half to death,” I say wryly.

Corvo laughs and takes a sip of wine. “I was glad to see you, even if you _were_ a shock.”

“I know you were,” I say, remembering.

I came to Corvo as I left the world: a beggar, a mongrel, a boy with no shoes. Well—boy is a stretch, given what I am, what I was, but even so. There was a certain desire there, to see how he would look at me when I was nothing more than when I was cast into the Void. How would he see my real face, my human face? I hadn’t expected to be welcomed.

Even less had I expected to be embraced, held close. I remember, still, Corvo telling me that he’d feared for my _life_ when Emily’s Mark ceased to function, that his heart nearly broke as rumor spread that there was someone missing from the Void. And as weeks stretched into months and into more than a year, as I took my own journey to Dunwall, he resigned himself to never seeing me again.

I was sitting on his windowsill, a wreck of all-too-fragile skin and bones, hollow human eyes in a familiar face. At that moment, I was dressed in whatever rags I’d been able to find as I made my way south from where Billie left me in Tyvia at my behest, deciding that I would be _human_ again before I reached out for Corvo. Through an incident legitimately no fault of my own I was, in fact, lacking shoes. When Corvo walked in the door, I expected…revulsion. To be thrown out, useless now without the power I could offer.

Instead, he took me into his arms and kissed me.

To this day, I’m shocked at the depth of feeling he held for me. Holds for me, rather. I was and am nothing compared to him, but he doesn’t see it that way. Of course he doesn’t. Corvo is Corvo, and his decisions rarely make sense. Somehow, however, they keep turning out well.

“The night’s young,” Corvo says suddenly. He turns to me and I’m aware suddenly of eyes on us, of the scrutiny he’s always under. “Give me the honor of just one dance?”

Once upon a time, he and I danced in secret in his room and I shamelessly plagiarized poets who would never be born to express feelings I _still_ can’t fully comprehend. And now here we are, under the eyes of the Empire, offered the chance to be in public all the things we ever were in private. Corvo’s eyes are nearly gold in the lights, and I’m lost in them already, as I always am.

His hand, when I take it, is sure and strong.

Initially, I believe no one notices that the Lord Protector is quite publicly dancing with the man who’s been the subject of so much speculation in the last year. It’s not something we usually do, attracting attention. But Corvo is a secret romantic, even if his poetry is bad, and I’m sure he’s been waiting anxiously for this. I might not be particularly given to gestures like these, but…I do like to dance with him. I love it, actually.

Somehow, though we’re in public, this feels incredibly intimate. We are only one of a dozen couples taking the same turn, but I see none of them. I have eyes only for my partner. He’s beautiful, truly beautiful, and I can’t stop admiring him. Tonight he’s happy and content, and it makes my ridiculous human heart swell with even more love.

“This is nice,” I say softly after a moment.

“Better than my room,” Corvo says.

I shake my head. “I never objected.”

“It always felt so much emptier, when you left,” Corvo admits.

“You do know that the definition of the Void is emptiness?”

He gives me a look and sends me into a gentle spin before pulling me back in. “Don’t. Just let this be, for tonight. For me.”

Tentatively I hold his hand a little tighter. I’m beginning to feel the eyes on us, but…right now I just don’t care. All that matters is Corvo, whose eyes are beyond imagining in the golden light suffusing the room. I can’t think about possible futures, or the worries that so constantly seem to weigh down my mortal shoulders. I feel free.

“I’ll apologize for being half as good as any other man in the room,” Corvo says after a dozen measures, with a self-deprecating roll of his eyes. “This isn’t my best light.”

“Oh, I like it. When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that,” I say, smiling without restraint.

Corvo shakes his head. “What poet are you stealing from _now_?”

“None you’d know.” That’s true; the Bard is unfortunately unknown in this place and time.

He looks so…so _lovesick._ “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“What do you mean…? One would think you’d want to hear _my_ words.”

“Of course,” Corvo says. “But whenever you speak…whatever you’re saying, even if stolen from someone else, it becomes _yours_.”

…oh.

I’m not sure what to say to that.

And I’m not entirely sure when we stopped dancing.

We’re just swaying in place, looking at each other. I wonder what he sees in my eyes, now. Now that they’re green and so unimpressively human. Whatever it is, it seems that he’ll never stop looking.

“By the Void, I love you,” Corvo says, so softly I can barely hear him over the music.

I swallow my objections and nod. “I love you,” I repeat, even softer.

It’s not really etiquette—honestly, I can think of a dozen examples without even trying of moments where something like this almost derailed larger empires than this—but I have no objections when Corvo closes the gap between us and kisses me. Only a gentle brush of lips, a brush that leaves my whole body on fire.

It’s not our first kiss, not nearly. Our first kiss was an abrupt and alarming one, more than fifteen years ago, moments before Corvo moved to seek out Hiram Burrows and bring him to justice. I never saw it coming, but Corvo has always been a surprising man. He still hasn’t told me what, exactly, he was thinking when he grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me into a kiss.

At that time, I was still an untouchable heretic god in his eyes, one who bestowed power on him, and narrated the course of his quest. Why he decided that he should kiss me, I absolutely cannot say. It left me shaken as few things had shaken me in four _thousand_ years trapped in the endless Void, and after all was said and done…I came back to him once again, because Corvo will never cease to fascinate me.

This feels like the first kiss we ever shared.

He draws back, and I hear a faint applause, and a whistle of approval that can only belong to Emily. When I look around, a circle has formed around us. Only loose, informal, but people are watching, and they are…smiling. All of them. Happy for us.

Corvo, used to the public eye, shakes his head and waves. He offers his arm and I take it, a little dazed, and still smiling. I catch Wyman’s eye and they raise their glass a bit, smiling brilliantly. Emily’s grinning from ear to ear in a most unregal fashion and that makes me smile, too.

“Well done,” Geoff Curnow says with an outright smirk, clapping Corvo on the shoulder as we step back into the crowd, the moment of excitement fading. “Took you long enough.”

“I’m very shy,” I inform him dryly. “It took _me_ long enough. Corvo would have done that on my first day in the Tower if I’d given him the chance.”

Curnow laughs. His wife, Abigail, a beautiful lady who once sailed on trading ships around the Isles and now enjoys a blissful retirement with her husband, offers a smile too. “Men like them will never change,” she advises. “Just enjoy it, young man.”

Oh, I know well that men like them will never change. Some things are a constant, and the grand gestures of men in love are a tradition older than the Isles themselves. But I just smile. “I’ll take that into consideration,” I say.

It takes Corvo and I some time, because he’s accosted every third step. Some want merely to offer congratulations, some are curious, and some wish to talk business. Few people address me directly unless they’re offering congratulations, but I don’t mind. I listen and watch, and enjoy Corvo’s solid presence at my side. The evening wears on, and we’re comfortable in our silence.

As the evening draws to a close, the announcement comes that people are invited to go outside to see the fireworks. Corvo and I make our way upstairs, instead of straight outside; there’s a balcony with a better view near his rooms, and it’s private besides. By the time we reach it, the show has almost begun, and we rush to the railing like excited children. Or, more accurately, like the absolutely giddy men in love we are.

The first rocket goes off in glorious gold, shooting higher than the tower, exploding in a fountain over us, and from there…it only grows. I can lose myself in the sound, the crackle and roar, the colors of the magnificent lights over us. It's as if the stars themselves are falling from the skies to dance for us. I lean heavily on the rail and simply stare, the fireworks seeming to fill my soul. It’s bliss, so far from the darkness and silence of the Void that I could cry.

Corvo stands beside me, leaning on the rail as I do. I suspect he isn’t watching the fireworks, but if I look at him I might very well find myself in tears. He’ll be looking at me the same way he always has. A look of admiration, adoration, and worship I don’t deserve. Though I don’t look at him, I do offer my hand.

He takes it.

And finally the final rockets go off. I can’t help a gasp: these fireworks are huge, bursts of color like I’ve never seen, like flowers shimmering in the night sky. All purple and silver and blue. Magnificent. A new kind of firework, these great bursts, something no one’s seen before. The cheers from below are thunderous. What a thing…only this woman could have come up with these, really. And somehow I didn’t see them coming.

“What are these?” I ask, glancing at Corvo.

 “Our inventor calls them hydrangeas,” Corvo says. “A novel invention. Commissioned for you.”

Slowly, I process that. “For…”

“For you.” Corvo looks down at me, the blue and purple light overhead casting his face in the same colors I’m used to seeing in the Void. “Hydrangeas…your favorite flowers, yes?”

I bite my lip and look back up at the sky, feeling the explosions of the fireworks shaking my bones. “Yes, they are…”

As the fireworks come to a close, a final burst of royal colors in gold and blue, Corvo and I stay standing where we are. I lean against him, against the strong shoulders that hold up the empire. Despite it all, all the violence and pain he’s faced, he’s…gentle. With everyone. With _me_. I love him.

“You didn’t have to commission fireworks,” I say at last.

“No, I didn’t,” Corvo says easily. “I wanted to have them for you. I remember shrines made for you with hydrangeas growing around, how much you adore those flowers. The rare thing for which you’ve always expressed a love.”

Finally, I look up at him properly. And yes: he’s giving me that look, the one that makes my heart pound and my head spin. “One of three things, actually.”

“The others…?”

“Whales, _obviously_ ,” I say dryly, and am rewarded by a laugh. “And you.”

He’s silent for a moment. Then, in lieu of speech, Corvo kisses me. I return it gladly, and since we’re somewhere no one can see we take our time. What we have isn’t meant for the public eye. It’s no secret, now, but some things…will always be private.

Apparently, Corvo has the same thought, for after a while, he says, “I left an audiograph player in my room…with music. Would you…”

“Of course,” I murmur.

It seems that there’s one last dance for us tonight.


End file.
